Great Expectations (1974 film)

Great Expectations is a 1974 film made for television based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was directed by Joseph Hardy, with screenwriter Sherman Yellen and music by Maurice Jarre, starring Michael York as Pip, Simon GippsKent as Young Pip and Sarah Miles as Estella. The production, for Transcontinental Films and Lew Grades ITC, was made for US television and released to cinemas in the UK. It broke with tradition by having the same actress the thirtythreeyearold Sarah Miles play both the younger and older Estella. The film was shot in Panavision by Freddie Young. It was filmed in Eastmancolor and it was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival in 1975.

Criticism was generally negative. The Listener Everything is wrong about it with a sort of dedicated, inspired wrongness that, in itself, is breathtaking. The Monthly Film Bulletin thought director Hardy and screenwriter Yellen had reduced one of Dickens most subtle and complex novels to an insipid seasonal confection. Gordon Gow, writing in Films and Filming thought it odd to have Pip divided between two players, while his beloved Estella should be played by one actress the whole way through.Brian McFarlane, writing in a 2008 study of screen adaptations of Great Expectations, criticised the film for its tendency to give way to clichs of sentimentality and assured the director, who had expressed a hope that people wouldnt feel the necessity of comparing it with David Leans version that, he need not have worried no one would have spoken of them in the same breath. Its not just Leans film with which it would not stand comparison but with several superior TV miniseries too. McFarlane expressed some admiration however for Margaret Leightons interpretation of the jilted Miss Havisham there is a potent sense of the perverse pleasure she takes in watching Estella humiliate Pip, and , during a later visit, of real cruelty in her telling him, Youve lost her. Leighton injected a necessary bitterness into these scenes. The critic David Parker praised Joss Acklands interpretation of Joe Gargery Ackland manages to create a subtle blend of individual simplicity and moral fortitude that seems to capture the essential role the village blacksmith fills in the narrative. ........

Source: Wikipedia